Chrome 15 Overtakes IE 8 For Top Browser Spot

An anonymous reader writes "If you're reading this on Chrome, you're part of a wave that has ditched Internet Explorer or Firefox and helped vault Google's browser to the top Web browser spot worldwide." Are you reading this on Chrome? (I'm using Chromium right now, but that's pretty close.)

Comments

Tree style tabs

[DragonHawk]

The one thing that keeps me off Chrome for serious web browsing is the lack of a **full** equivalent to Tree Style Tab. I've found various attempts, but until something with all the critical features is available, I can't leave Firefox.

And yes, it's that important. I find serious web browsing without tree tabs is basically unusable.

Some analysis of Chrome extensions I've tried follows below, along with a longer explaination of why tree tabs matter.

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Why tree tabs are important

Critical features:

* Arrange tabs in a hierarchy (subordinate/superior relationships)
* Links middle-clicked to open in a new tab, open under the current tab
* You can collapse branches of the tabs tree, like a folder tree in Explorer/Outlook
* You can drag tabs around to restructure the tree

  For example, my current top-level hierarchies at work are "PVI clusterfsck", "vern buerg list", "to read", "vmware ctrl alt del", "new server", and "training". "training" has four immediate subtabs, each for various training providers we use at $WORK. Each of those is an exploration of their course hierarchy. I can expand or collapse any section or subsection as my focus changes. I can also bookmark branches for later.

  For me, at least, knowledge isn't linear, it's tree structured. The Back/Forward paradigm is totally inadequate for the task.

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Tree Style Tabs (Beta)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ffididlaalcoegfcalmeldjfnihmoech

  Unfortunately, it's lacking some features. The biggest is that it
doesn't actually replace the tab bar across the top of the screen.
Rather, it gives you a new toolbar button, which, when clicked, drops
down a tree structure. No way to make that appear permanently, that I
can see. (TreeStyleTab appears much like a "side bar" in Firefox.)
The tree structure does reflect which tab opened from which. But I
can't drag tabs or branches to organize them, nor can I
collapse/expand branches.

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Tab Sense
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oiabeebnmckkdjloeofbfladabfhedlg

  Similar to the "Tree Style Tabs (Beta)" above. Same
button-not-a-sidebar issue. Does allow collapse/expand, which is
good. It opens up a new Google Chrome window to hold collapsed tabs
(with the message to minimize it and forget about it), which is rather
kludgey. Still can't drag tabs.

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Tabs Manager
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ioigddmjfpphkbamgbaolfkpifddnaje

  Same button-not-a-sidebar issue. Tab structure doesn't appear to
reflect browsing history. Seems to have only two levels, a "folder"
it creates, and all your tabs. Does allow dragging of those tabs, but
I'm not sure what the point is. Can't find a way to create a folder.
I'm not quite sure what the point is.

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  Some of these limitations might be due to Chrome's architecture,
rather than the extension programmers. In particular, I suspect
Chrome just doesn't let extensions have enough access to the UI to do
anything really useful. Which is a shame, because Chrome feels so
much faster than Firefox.

Re:First post from firefox

[Nimey]

Back in the day Opera /was/ worth the $39 license fee. This was in the days of Netscape 4 (ptui!) and Internet Explorer 4 (bletch), and it was really the only decent browser; didn't crash your system on a regular basis or bring it to a crawl.